And this is a blast from the past, unedited.

 

 

TOC TOC (“name’s so nice you say it twice”)

 

Sudden shocks come often on Sunday, as Murphy’s law can get a lower profile at times, but it will never, truly, be outdated. 

Chatting on the train to Amsterdam with a friend of mine (recent acquisition, friend of the Boss, very blonde as well) the topic erred toward food and, of course, The Organic Choice, which I will fastidiously abbreviate in the following as TOC. The lady is an early-thirties student of Medicine, already with a degree in Psychology in her bag, currently doing her “workmanship” at AMC, therefore, we could say, a doctor, or someone who very strongly aspire to be one. 

 

And she’s so busy (so she said) because of her studying life and so “poor” for the very same reason, that TOC is out of question. Her food pusher is Mr. Albert Hein, the discussion truly originating because she a) didn’t come for dinner at my place, being invited, and she KNOWS what a cook I am b) on the way to Mr. Kravitz’s exhibition past July 4th she couldn’t resist the temptation of a Mr. Heijn’s pre-packaged (and maybe even pre-digested) mayonnaise sandwich. These are those slabs of bread (any color, any kind) with a whitish-yellowish paste in between them, theoretically there’s something else in there, but I DARE you to recognize what, submerged as it is by all that spunk. 

 

NOW: how can you be a medicine’s student and eat that stuff? How can you be ANY person nowadays and spend 3 (God I want to write it in 96 pt. font!) EUROS for…what? Here is the first point: what are you paying for? Should you assemble the sandwich yourself, you will have the chance to chose your own bread, ask the baker the QUESTION: what’s inside it? And you know where the bakery is, if something is wrong, you CAN go back and make a mess. I am just speaking theoretically, here. But isn’t the idea in itself somehow comforting? Ditto for the mayo and the topping of your choice. Of YOUR choice. 

Who will you complain to, shouldn’t you like the A.H. sandwich? The 19 y.o. boy with his gaze lost on the stars behind the counter? To the “Consumer Center”, “We Want To Hear From You: please call 0900-…. (0.5/Eur p.m.)??? A fax perhaps, or an old fashioned letter to Mr. Heijn?

Come on, let’s be realistic.

You are eating something you have no control on and no chance to complain about and at WHAT cost?? Do we want to talk about money??

How much do you think would have cost to “assemble” (no, I don’t call it “cooking”, you wouldn’t too if you were, cooking) such a “sandwich”? Make the math. 

2 Euros. Choosing the BEST ingredients. I’m talking French stuff here. Oh, I forgot: 5 minutes of your time.

And I haven’t even STARTED with the “TOC”.

 

This arise from the question: can non-organic food (NOF in the following) be harmful to you? The answers go from “yes” to “maybe”. At the moment, there’s no certain “no”, to be registered. The spectrum is broad: together with the NOF we are ingesting relevant amount of pesticides, heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, etc etc ETC) and rBGH: re-combinant bovine growth hormone, stuff that makes cows grows unnaturally bigger, from the birth. So unnaturally that in the worst cases (10% of the total), the calve at birth cannot get “out” and you have to kill and slaughter the mother!! Oh, and antibiotics, a lot of them. The lifestyle of the cattles is so shitty that they get sick much more often than normal, therefore: they’re constantly under medication (but unfortunately no painkillers) and they die much earlier than what’s naturally expected. On average a “normal” cow lives for around 2 years, after which is on a truck to the slaughterhouse. Oh, an “organic” one? 14,15, sometimes 16 years. Cool uh? And it makes milk until the end because it is delivering young organic calves until then. COOL, UH?

The non organic one is sterile, after 2 years, therefore: no milk, no calves. Therefore the cow is not anymore a living thing, just a lump of soft matter, to be eaten or turned into baseball gloves, soccerballs, whatever. Well, not just a lump of matter. Also a bit of chemistry. Well, actually a little bit more than a bit. Let’s see. Color: red, but RED, I mean RED RED. E128 or Red 2G, the “vermillion” red, the red the people want to pay for. Now banned. What is made of? Actually the formula is “8-acetamido-1-hydroxy-2-phenylazonaphthalene-3,6 disulphonate” and it was used, mostly in the UK and Ireland, to turn breakfast sausages (!!!), luckily unknown in civilized place, into red furies. 

Carcinogenic. OOOOPS! The Food Commission states that the fact was known since 1980s, but it was been banned, once and for all we hope, in 2007. That’s the world we live in. Therefore, WHY RISK IT? 

That is the point that I don’t understand. Why do I have to write article such as this one to CONVINCE, to PROVE, to submit EVIDENCE? Why normal caution is not ENOUGH?

Would you risk it? Knowing that GREED is the engine moving food producers, farmers, and so on and so forth to gives us something that 1) we will pay for 2) we will eat without complaining for, will YOU risk it? For what? For the price difference? 25% and declining? MUCH less if you don’t consume plenty of meat? 

I don’t understand why bother: we pay for life and medical insurance and then not for our food. For branded clothes but not for quality food. For fancy cars that we risk never to drive because the chances that we’ll be at the hospital, busy with chemio, is truly significant. What is for? All these lifestyle, all those bullshit? Are we really too busy, too poor?